Cape Air grounds fleet after engine failures

Friday

Jun 15, 2007 at 2:00 AM

By Peter A. Sutters Jr. I&M Staff Writer

Cape Air/Nantucket Airlines yesterday voluntarily decided to suspend all flights between Nantucket and Hyannis as a precautionary measure after a series of engine failures on its Cessna 402C twin-engine aircraft over the past few weeks.

Most of the 49-plane fleet, including those Cessnas used for flights in Florida and the Caribbean, also remain grounded, although as planes get repaired they will be returned to the air, Cape Air spokeswoman Michelle Haynes said.

The problem has been identified as an abnormal wear pattern on the counter-weight of the engine’s crank shaft. The cause of the excessive wear is unknown at this time. The vast majority of Cessna 402C aircraft that remain in service around the country are located at Nantucket Memorial Airport and the Barnstable Municipal Airport, operated by Cape Air and Island Airlines, according to the Cessna Pilots Association. Cessna no longer manufactures the 402C.

“This is the most difficult decision we have had to make in the history of our airline,” Haynes said. “The engine failures are a very rare occurrence and when three happened in a short period of time, an red flag went up and we decided to shut all of our planes down. Our customers’ safety is our top priority.”

On the first day without commuter air service, the boat lines reported busier than usual days, but were able to pick up the slack without too much difficulty. Organizers of the Nantucket Film Festival, which opened last night, said they heard reports of some festival-goers experiencing delays but no real problems reaching the island yesterday.

The latest incident occurred Tuesday afternoon on a Nantucket to Boston flight with nine passengers on board. Island resident Chris Perry was on the plane and said he was reading the paper when he heard a noise and the left engine began spewing oil and puffing white smoke shortly after the aircraft had passed over Cape Cod and was heading toward the South Shore. The pilot shut down the engine and after a slight dip, leveled out the plane and continued on toward Boston.

“It was a little disconcerting,” said Perry. “There was a family from Kansas City on board and it was the first time they had been on a little plane. When we got to Logan the guy got off the plane and kissed the ground.”

Perry said his father was a pilot and he knew the Cessna 402 could fly on one engine, so his degree of concern was less than that of the family from Kansas City.

Perry said the flight got priority to land at Logan Airport in Boston and was met on the runway by four fire engines and an ambulance. No one was injured and the plane landed safely.

A similar incident occurred on Nantucket May 24 when a Hyannis to Nantucket Cape Air flight also lost an engine. Emergency service vehicles were mobilized to Nantucket Memorial Airport, but the plane landed safely.

Cape Air had repaired the damaged crank-shafts on five of its planes as of Wednesday morning, and is making limited flights from Boston to Martha’s Vineyard and very limited flights from Boston to Nantucket, Haynes said.

But the island could be without service from Hyannis through the end of the week at best and into next week at worst, she said.

Cape Air is making arrangements to get passengers with reservations on their flights to Nantucket on alternate modes of transportation, including buses from Boston to Hyannis and ferry tickets.

Island Airlines, which operates a fleet of eight Cessna 402s, has not experienced the engine problems and is also honoring Cape Air tickets when space is available on their flights.

Dan Wolf, president and CEO of Cape Air, who is also a pilot for the airline and a licensed mechanic, said representatives from Teledyne Continental Motors, the 402’s engine manufacturers, were on location aiding in the repair of the planes as well as looking for a cause.

Wolf stressed there was no indication of what caused the abnormal wear, but did say that Cape Air, in an effort to save on fuel consumption and reduce noise, had changed the “operational parameters” of how they fly.

The change, according to Wolf, is to use less power at start-up and when taking off. Wolf again stressed the change in the operational parameters was well within the standards set forth by the engine manufacturer and that Cape Air had consulted with Teledyne Continental Motors before making the switch this past winter.

“There is no way at this stage that we can connect the two,” Wolf said. “As a precaution we’ve stopped doing it, we made the switch several days ago.”

This is not the first problem to hinder the operations of the Cape Air fleet. In 2005 cracks in the wing spars of Cessna 402’s across the country caused a federally-mandated repair program.

Wing spars are the principal section of the wing structure of an airplane, running from tip to tip. They extend lengthwise through the wing, and sustain the pressure put on the wings during flight.

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